1. Early Diagnosis of Tularemia by Flow Cytometry, Czech Republic, 2003-20151.
- Author
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Chrdle, Aleš, Tinavská, Pavlína, Dvořáčková, Olga, Filipová, Pavlína, Hnetilová, Věra, Žampach, Pavel, Batistová, Květoslava, Chmelík, Václav, Semper, Amanda E., and Beeching, Nick J.
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COMPARATIVE studies , *FLOW cytometry , *RESEARCH methodology , *MEDICAL cooperation , *RESEARCH , *SERODIAGNOSIS , *T cells , *TULAREMIA , *EVALUATION research , *RETROSPECTIVE studies , *CASE-control method , *EARLY diagnosis - Abstract
We retrospectively assessed the utility of a flow cytometry-based test quantifying the percentage of CD3+ T cells with the CD4-/CD8- phenotype for predicting tularemia diagnoses in 64 probable and confirmed tularemia patients treated during 2003-2015 and 342 controls with tularemia-like illnesses treated during 2012-2015 in the Czech Republic. The median percentage of CD3+/CD4-/CD8- T cells in peripheral blood was higher in tularemia patients (19%, 95% CI 17%-22%) than in controls (3%, 95% CI 2%-3%). When we used 8% as the cutoff, this test's sensitivity was 0.953 and specificity 0.895 for distinguishing cases from controls. The CD3+/CD4-/CD8- T cells increased a median of 7 days before tularemia serologic test results became positive. This test supports early presumptive diagnosis of tularemia for clinically suspected cases 7-14 days before diagnosis can be confirmed by serologic testing in regions with low prevalences of tularemia-like illnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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